Family Mediation - Other

Issues with your in-laws? Your spouse? Your teen-ager? Mediation can help clarify the issues, reach new understandings and repair rifts in relationships.

How Mediators Can Help

Unresolved conflict and the resulting emotional alienation in families leads to unrewarding marriages, troubled children, distant relationships, divorce, abandonment, family estrangements and sometimes violence. We know our families are in trouble when approximately 40% of all marriages end in divorce. Professionals in the field believe one of the reasons for this situation is that schooling in the emotional aspect of our personhood has been neglected throughout our formative years. Current research emphasizes that emotional intelligence is as important as technical knowledge to developing successful families and careers.

Its not too late to fix the problem. Learning new conflict resolution skills through mediation, harnesses our own natural forces that can heal wounds caused by anger, insult, and hurt—the fallout of mutual revenge.

Examples of Issues That Can Be Mediated

• Pre-marital and co-habitation plans
• Post-divorce issues
• Teenagers and their parents
• Schools and parents
• Teenage pregnancy
• Relocation
• In-law Issues
• Estates/Inheritance
• Issues between spouses

BENEFITS OF MEDIATION

• Lower costs—both financial, emotional and health—due to prompt resolution and prevention of disputes.
• Parties find it easier to express themselves in mediation.
• Parties appreciate increased privacy and control over decisions.
• The range of solutions is wider in mediation.
• There are high levels of lasting settlements as they are reached through negotiation rather than imposed.
• Many clients feel they change the way they handle conflict due to their mediation experience and this has a beneficial impact on their lives.

Through mediation, parties often learn new ways of communicating. We will coach parties before sessions begin with tips on good communication practices. We help by modeling good communication practices ourselves and set ground rules which parties agree to follow in our sessions.

We can provide skills training to those who wish to equip themselves with conflict resolution tools such as managing emotions, negotiation, collaboration, reflective listening, conflict styles to name a few. These skills can allow you to regain and maintain trust and intimacy, and transform conflict and alienation into more meaningful, positive relationships